Column: Law enforcement in agriculture

Wednesday

Oct 29, 2008 at 12:01 AMOct 29, 2008 at 3:15 AM

Concern describes my thoughts on American agriculture and private sectors at the present time. President Bush has signed the “economic stimulus package” that Congress passed, and the Fed has lowered the interest rate. Without any question, something had to be done.

By Fred Baker

Concern describes my thoughts on American agriculture and private sectors at the present time. President Bush has signed the “economic stimulus package” that Congress passed, and the Fed has lowered the interest rate. Without any question, something had to be done. To have done nothing would have been worse, maybe catastrophic.

Congress and the Justice Department now have a bigger job of monitoring the situation and ensuring that laws that are on the books are enforced.

In agriculture this sounds familiar. We are now in the midst of one of the biggest mergers of our time — the Swift and JBS merger. This merger has brought us some of the most compelling arguments ever heard. One is that the Justice Department needs to enforce both the Packers and Stockyards Act and the Clayton Act and be concerned with the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.

These are laws that have been around a long time. The Sherman Antitrust Act was passed by Congress in 1890, while the Clayton Act was passed in 1914.

Both the investment banking crisis and the merger of Swift and JBS have many of the same themes. In my opinion, we do not need to reinvent the wheel, we just need to monitor and oversee both of these situations with the laws and regulations that are already in place.

If not, we have a created an agricultural monopoly just like the banking monopolies.

Another recent issue involves the mandatory Country of Origin Labeling law now finally being implemented by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

COOL should have been the law of the land four years ago but has been delayed by opponents who don’t feel it’s important for consumers to know where their meat comes from.

Now that COOL is the law of the land, the USDA has chosen to interpret country-of-origin as countries-of-origin. So the label you might see in the meat case will read, “This package may contain product from the U.S., Canada and Mexico.” This effectively dilutes the law and doesn’t allow consumers to know where their meat really comes from.

Earlier this month, 32 U.S. senators sent a letter to USDA stating that using a label indicating that the beef was of mixed origin when it was really from the United States was not living up to the spirit of the law.

It’s not enough just to have a law. We have to be vigilant in making sure how the laws we have on the books are interpreted and enforced.

Fred Baker has been farming in Streator, Ill., since 1972. He grows corn, soybeans and wheat as well as raising registered Hereford cattle.

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